Toyota, Daihatsu Partner To Target Markets Like India

Toyota announced its plans, on Tuesday, to develop and market compact vehicles in emerging markets, as the Japanese automaker aims to expand its market share in other Asian markets, including India.

For this, a new unit will be established around January, Toyota said in a statement, and added that the operations of this facility will be handled by compact car manufacturer Daihatsu. The company was acquired by the car major earlier this year for about $3 billion (Rs 199 lakh crore) to bolster its small car business.

“With the establishment of the internal company, Toyota intends to learn the very fundamentals of Daihatsu's competitiveness and change the way we work,” Toyota executive vice president Shigeki Terashi said in a statement.

Daihatsu has been known to successfully develop popular compact vehicles that are both inexpensive and profitable. While Toyota has been a driving force in the industry globally, this is a feat that the company has been unable to match.

Across the globe, Toyota has seen its stock decline in the wake of increasing preference towards SUVs and bigger cars; while the likes of Hyundai and Honda have swept past the carmaker in India, with their smaller offerings. The company had recently launched new versions of the Etios and the Liva as well, but is still far off from the top small car makers in the country.

Earlier this year, Toyota President Akio Toyoda had announced that the company would move away from a structure focused on different regions of the world and would instead create smaller, more nimble units devoted to specific types of cars.

With this, he hoped that the company moves faster at developing the sorts of cars customers want to buy. The new emerging-markets unit is “positioned differently” from the products-focused divisions, the company said in a statement.